Places and People

A Sunburnt Country

‘I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains. Of rugged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains. I love her far horizons, I love her jeweled sea, her beauty and her terror, the wide brown land for me.’ Dorothy McKellar

After leaving behind the hustle and bustle of Longreach, I could write about the dust, the dirt, the flies and the endless vast wasteland of sameness. But I won’t. Because there is something about all this (though possibly not the flies) that adds to the breathtaking beauty of this sunburnt land. Winton is home to Banjo Patterson, who wrote of Clancy seeing ‘the vision splendid of the sunlight plains extended.’ I’ve seen those plains in the last few days, with colours that alter as the day drifts onwards and the slip of a silver moon emerges to welcome in a vast and star filled sky. These photos don’t do justice to those sunlight plains, to those rugged mountain ranges and the far horizons of a wide brown land.

The Waltzing Matilda Centre at Winton is a tribute to not only the most iconic song ever written by an Australian, but also hosts a treasure of memorabilia and stories about the people that have contributed to the history of Winton. Due to an electrical fault the entire centre was destroyed by fire in 2015, but to the sweet tune of $23 million it was rebuilt and opened in April, 2018.